11 steps to Pinterest marketing success

Pinterest is unique among social media sites in that it's a place for high intent users. A study by Social Media Today found 93% of Pinterest users use the platform to make or plan purchases.

Pinterest's audience drives more referral traffic than any other social media platform. The same study found Pinterest generates 33% more referral traffic to retail sites than Facebook, 71% more than Snapchat and 200% more than Twitter.

If you're selling products, Pinterest is the social media platform you need to be taking advantage of. To get the most out of your Pinterest marketing, follow these tips.

Signing up for a business account on Twitter gives you access to a suite of tools you won't get with a personal account. You'll get the Pinterest Save button or a Pinterest widget to add to your own website. You'll also get access to Pinterest Analytics.

Pinterest Analytics will let you track engagement for all your Pins, including organic and paid engagement. You can also see audience behaviors so you can track the topics your audience is interested in. As your ramp up your Pinterest marketing strategy, you may want to use a more robust analytics tool like Viralwoot or Tailwind, but Pinterest's analytics tools will give you some great insight as you get started on the platform.

If you take nothing else away from this article, remember Rich Pins. They're a feature offered by Pinterest that adds dynamic content to your Pins to help give them more context.

Rich Pins are broken into article, app, recipe and product Pins. A product Pin will include information like pricing, availability and where to buy. An app Pin will offer an install button so people can download your app without leaving Pinterest (they're only compatible with iOS at this point).

Rich Pins can only be used by business accounts. You have to apply for Rich Pins access, and you'll have to add some metadata to your own website. But the context and interactive features they bring to your Pins are well worth the hassle. You can find out more about the process on Pinterest's business site.

Boards are how you organize your content on Pinterest. Individual Pins are displayed on your boards, so give some thought to how best to organize your content.

If you're a retail brand, you might think about organizing boards into types of products. If you're offering services, you can choose broader themes relating to the service you provide. Or you might just group similar types of content together.

Pinterest users can choose to follow your account as a whole or just individual boards you create. Content you Pin will appear in your followers' newsfeed. Remember to use keywords in your board titles, but don't go beyond the maximum 20 character limit.

Any image you upload to Pinterest will be automatically cropped to fit their newsfeed format, but you don't want to risk important parts of your image being cropped out. Pinterest's preferred image ratio is 2:3, but you can go up to 1:2.8 for longer images. The maximum width is 600px, so for a 2:3 image that would be 600x900px. An image can't be taller than 1560px.

Pinterest is all about creating eye-catching content. Your posts should have a consistent look and feel to them. If you're not artistically inclined, there are some good guidelines to follow to generate the best engagement. A study by Curalate found brand images without faces receive 23% more engagement than images with faces. The study also found warm colors do better than cooler colors, lighter images do better than dark images and images with multiple dominant colors get more engagement than images with a single dominant color.

For product images, Pinterest itself recommends showcasing your product in use. Don't just show a plain image of your product. Show it in action. Tell people the story of what can be done with your product.

How-to imagery also does well on Pinterest. Instructional infographics see high levels of engagement.

If creating visual content for Pinterest seems daunting, you can try a tool like Canva that offers templates for Pinterest posts. Or you could consider hiring a freelance graphic designer to create your imagery.

Pinterest is an aspirational social media platform. Unlike most other social media platforms, it doesn't focus on sharing updates or life events. It focuses on helping users envision the best version of themselves.

Your content needs to take this into account. Don't just sell on Pinterest. Offer users instruction and inspiration. If you're selling a product, show them how to use it, when to use it and where to use it. Keep in mind that "DIY" is the second most popular category on Pinterest, directly after "Food and Drink."

To get your content in front of more people, look for popular boards relevant to your industry. Follow them and engage with their content. You can even invite them to collaborate on a board.

When you're creating a board, you'll be offered the option to let other users add Pins. Reach out to some influential Pinterest accounts and invite them to add Pins to your board. This means you'll get your content in front of their followers.

Collaborative boards aren't just for courting influencers. They're also a great way to engage with your own audience. You can set your board to be an Open Board, meaning other users can add Pins. You'll still have admin authority, meaning you can remove any Pins you deem irrelevant or low quality.

In addition to allowing followers to collaborate on your boards, follow their boards. Engage with their content as well. Repin their relevant content, comment on their Pins and reply to comments they leave for you.

Every social media platform has its peak times and frequencies for posting. Pinterest is a higher volume platform than many other social networks. According to HubSpot, the the best times to post on Pinterest are 8–11PM and 2–4AM.

Getting the most out of Pinterest means a higher frequency of posts. In contrast to other social networks where 1–2 posts per day will suffice, 11 Pins per day is the recommended volume for Pinterest.

This doesn't mean you need to create 11 fresh pieces of content per day. You should also be Repinning content from other sources. If you're creating 2–3 of your own Pins per day and Repinning 8–9 pieces of content from other sources, you'll be hitting your optimum volume.

Drive users to your Pinterest from every possible source. If you've signed up for a business account, you'll receive a Pinterest button or widget to use on your site. Make liberal use of Pinterest links on your own site, allowing visitors to Pin your products or content.

You should also promote your Pinterest on your other social media accounts. You can connect your Pinterest account to your Twitter and Facebook accounts in your Pinterest settings (though you can only connect a personal Facebook account).

When you create a Pin, Pinterest will automatically suggest keywords to tag it with. Pick as many as are relevant and then add any others you can think of. Even tangentially related keywords are worth adding. The more keywords you add to your post, the more discoverable your content will be.

Pinterest might be the biggest social media goldmine available to your business. Unfortunately, it can also be one of the most time-consuming. If you want help with your Pinterest marketing, consider hiring a social media marketing expert to help coordinate your strategy.